Carsten’s Birth Story {& $75 PinkBlush Giveaway!}

{The PinkBlush Boutique & Maternity $75 gift card giveaway has closed! Head over to my Instagram to see who won! Thank you to all who participated! and thank you to PinkBlush for partnering with me on this giveaway!}

I’m in that stage of pregnancy when I wake up and think: “Oh my gosh I’m not ready. I can’t do this!” You know… the stage where you’re dreading labor and everything that goes with it? Yeah… that one. Good news is: this means little girl isn’t done yet. She’s still got a few more weeks to pack on the LBs 😉 It’s not until you’re in the “Oh my gosh just get this thing out of me!” stage that baby is finally ready to make his/her way into the world.

But this ‘terrified of labor’ stage has me reminiscing about Carsten’s birth story. I am so interested to see how this little girl’s birth story will be different because each story is always different. So as I get ready to meet this little lady, I thought I would share the story of how my baby boy decided to make his arrival.

I had been having a lot of really painful false labor pains/contractions which sent me to the hospital over a week before Carsten’s due date. But after no progression and a lack of consistency with the contractions, I was sent home to continue the waiting game.

Max and I spent the next three to five days literally walking 10 miles. Things were going smoothly and I was feeling good so I put the possibility of delivering earlier than my due date (November 13th) out of my mind.

But at about 6:30 am on Friday, November 9th, I woke up, rolled over in bed and it felt like I had peed my pants. Little man was so low at this point so initially I thought… well… that’s not that big of a surprise. There wasn’t a whole lot of ‘control’ 😉 I got out of bed and the leaking continued so I knew pretty quickly that it wasn’t my bladder. My water had broke.

I had a check-up scheduled for later that morning so I told Max I was just going to wait until that appointment at 11:15 am. In retrospect: this was ridiculous. I knew you had to deliver within 24 hours of your water breaking to avoid infection so I should have gone in right away… but… I went to work and waited until 11:15 to go in to the clinic.

As soon as I got into my doc, she checked to make sure my bag of waters had actually broke (of course it had) and she told me to go straight to the hospital. My mom had gone with me to this appointment because Max was in the middle of November election coverage at the news station where he worked at the time. My mom is a Physicians Assistant so the plan was for her to be my doula during labor.

I knew once I got to the hospital that they wouldn’t let me eat anything so instead of going straight to check in… I grabbed a meatball sub at Subway. I was starving! Thank goodness I did this because it wasn’t until well after midnight that I was able to eat again.

We finally got to the hospital around 12:45 pm and it wasn’t until well after 1 pm that they got me into a delivery room. Max got to the hospital not long after that and we started walking to get things going. By 3 pm, my doctor decided to hook me up to Pitocin to get things going.

Leading up to delivery, I had done a lot of research and talked to both my mom and my mother-in-law about their own experiences to help me prepare my birth plan. I stayed very open-minded but I knew going into labor that I wanted to do my best to have a completely natural birth. Pitocin threw the ‘completely’ natural birth out the window but I wasn’t going to give up at the first hiccup in the plan.

We played Farkle until about 5 pm. By then, I was in too much pain to concentrate. I spent the next four and a half hours in the whirlpool bathtub and on the birthing ball. I was in so much pain (umm… Pitocin is awful) but the thought of being in bed (which is required if you’re going to have an epidural) made me sick. I felt the worst when I had tried to get into bed. I said ‘no’ to the epidural.

At about 10 pm, I had the urge to push. They kept checking to see how dilated I was and they told me at least once (probably twice) that I wasn’t quite ready to push. I remember looking in my nurse’s eyes and saying, “Well at this point it’s going to happen. I have to push.” She almost started laughing because I probably gave her the biggest death glare after being on Pitocin and no epidural. She checked me again and FINALLY said “Yes… you’re ready to push.”

My doctor happened to be on call that night (thank the Lord!) so she walked in to start the pushing process. I remember pushing for about 5 minutes before I turned to my mom and said “I am SO tired.” She said, “Well they call it labor for a reason!” I can’t believe I didn’t punch her. 😉 Side note: Max was SO amazing during all of this. He literally didn’t say a word and just did what the nurses told him would help me. I could tell he was so excited to meet his son but so concerned for me throughout the whole process.

Luckily, after my mother’s accurate, but unnecessary, comment 😉 I only pushed for another 15 minutes before our sweet little man arrived! I was so proud of myself for making it through labor without an epidural but I was so much more excited to meet our darling boy. It was the most incredibly moment as Max and I welcomed this perfect little blessing into our family. I had never felt so full of love as I did in that moment. The moment I became a mom.

He struggled to breathe once he came into the world and within an hour of being born Carsten was taken to the NICU for some tests. They found that he had basically blown a hole in both of his lungs, which can happen by taking too big of a breathe upon exiting the birth canal. It can be a very serious problem that involves extremely scary surgery or the body can repair itself. We were so incredibly fortunate that both holes repaired themselves and we only spent four days in the NICU before we were sent home. He has had no further breathing problems since then which is unreal but, if you know Carsten, you know he rarely does anything without a little drama. 😉

So that’s how our first-born came into the world! We are just a little over 5 weeks away from baby girl’s due date and I can’t wait to see how she decides to write her own story.

xo

-M

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